Luminous
by TickTimeTock
Summary: Castiel begins to attend Lawrence High School. He meets Sam, and Sam's older sibling Dean. He falls in step with the brothers, one he becomes best friends with and the other that makes his world kind of spin in a way Cas can't admit. Castiel is fighting against family and self crises, and his actually mildly crippling lack of social skills isn't helping.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1****  
Year 9: Arrival.**

Lawrence High School. Castiel Novak barely took notice of the fading sign as he incredibly nervously walked up the steps to the front office of his new high school. Pushing open the worn doors, he entered and loped up to the lady at the front desk.  
"Uhh… hi. I'm Castiel- Castiel Novak. I'm, new, I understand I was to request assista- ask for help, here?"  
The woman glanced up briefly, looked down and sighed. In a monotonous and scripted voice, she said,  
"Your class is 9D. Your homeroom teacher is Mr Singer, and your guide and buddy's name is Sam Winchester. Feel free to ask him any questions. Please wait out those doors."  
Castiel stood there for a moment, unsure if he had been dismissed. When the lady shuffled her papers across and began to type at her computer, he realised he had been and quickly stumbled out of the doors on the other side of the building. He looked down the hall both ways, searching for any indicator of the person that might be Sam.

It wasn't long before a bright eyed, shaggy haired kid traipsed up to him.  
"Hey man! You must be Castiel. Cool name, I'm Sam. I'll be your buddy, which basically means I'll show you around and help you out and stuff. We don't usually have all the buddies and stuff, but someone arriving during the middle of the second semester of the year seems to be a pretty rare occurrence or something. Anyway! I'm Sam. I think I said that. Let's go and find your locker, shall we?"  
And with that Sam turned left into the hallway, Castiel following anxiously behind. They reached a musty grey locker, and Sam turned to Castiel once more.  
"Hey, so this is your locker, umber 665. Mine's just down there – number 641, the one with the Harry Potter sticker on it. I'm kind of a fan. Your locker's at the end of the year nine ones because you came to this school so late, but that just means you'll be next to the year ten lockers, which isn't really a big deal – "

Castiel saw someone come up behind Sam and ruffle his hair, making Sam whirl around and push the offender away.  
"Dean! Stop it, I'm showing Castiel around the school."  
"Castiel, ey?" the one apparently named Dean turned to face him.  
"You're in the same class as my brother then?"  
Castiel somehow managed to stutter out a reply.  
"Uh, well, I'm in Sam's class… I infer, uh, guess he's your sibling?"  
"Yep, Sammy hear is my baby brother. You definitely seem the type he keeps in company – I'm Dean, I'm in year 10, and my locker is also apparently next to yours."  
Sam blanched. "Dean, don't be stupid, your locker's way down the hall!"  
Dean gave Sam an impish grin.  
"Not anymore. This one's far closer to my homeroom, and it isn't hard to get a girl to swap locker's with you when its number is 666. A scary story or two gets them nice and vulnerable. The way I like them."  
"You're a sick jerk."  
"You're a wimpy bitch."

Castiel took time away from the brotherly bickering to cast his eyes over the rest of the hall. All the lockers were grey and numbered, with various imperfections and inscriptions covering many of their surfaces. The walls were peppermint green and the floor was a light, mottled grey. Students gathered in groups around different lockers, animatedly chatting and gossiping. Others sorted out books, while others still were being quite… physical.  
Castiel blushed and turned back to the conversation, but not before Dean noticed what he'd seen.  
"That chick making out with that dude, she's Lucy. She's in year 11, and the first thing you need to know is to not get in her friggen way. Like, not even eye contact. She's hot, but she's like a friggen, I dunno, impala or something."  
Sam looked pointedly at Dean.  
"An impala is a type of African antelope."  
"Well not an impala then! Some type of horned thing though. Like a deer, or devil of elephant. Or something – anyway, the dude she's with is named Nick, I don't even know how he got that gig – she's not even that into him or anything. She keeps flirting with Sammy –"  
"She is absolutely not flirting with me Dean. She only talks to me when she has to. Which is barely ever."  
"She finds reasons to talk to you! No one wears that low cut a top and that short a skirt and 'accidentally' drops all their books in front of you. Dude, c'mon. Seriously."  
"She's like, nearly two years older than me! Why would she – oh man I am so sorry!"  
Sam focused his attention back to Castiel.  
"I'm sorry Castiel, I'll have to show you around a later, during lunch or something, since my brother is a ginormous jerk ("bitch" Dean mutters under his breath) and the bell's about to ring for homeroom. Just shove your stuff in your locker and grab your books and stuff, the room we're in is pretty far away from here. You can meet some of my friends there though!"

Castiel hastened to sort out his belongings, quickly memorising the code for his locker Sam had given him just then before grabbing his books and walking hurriedly with Sam down the hall as the bell rang.

* * *

**Author's Note:  
**Well hello there! Congratulations to you if you managed to make it this far. Uh, this story probably isn't going to be what you'd define as short.  
Please review, favourite, follow, whatever else you do on this site if you feel like it. Constructive criticism is entirely welcome, of course. Note that some spelling may be different in this such as 'grey' and 'memorising' as I'm from Australia. Lovely!

-E


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Classes**

Castiel looked at his homeroom teacher from his desk in the second last row.  
"Come on, idjits! Get in the door! Don't dawdle!"  
Latecomers to class giggled and quickly paced to their desks.  
"Uh, Castiel, you should probably move," whispered Sam from his desk in front of the boy.  
"You're sitting where, uhh, someone else generally sits… you should sit somewhere else for your, well, safety."  
As Sam finished that sentence, a girl glided through the door, saw Castiel and walked towards him like a hawk intent upon its prey. She was wearing a loose, cropped white shirt with a thick black vertical stripe on its left side and short, crimson skirt. Around her neck was a fine silver chain with a small ruby coloured gemstone pendant hanging from it. She had dark eyes and hair, and looked vaguely of Italian descent.

"Hey. Little bitch in my chair. You have exactly ten seconds to decide the best course of action, or I'll rip your pretty eyes out. Now, **Move.**"

Castiel gaped for a moment before scuttling out of his chair with as little thought of what exactly he was doing as possible. He managed to grab his books and move out of the way before tripping over the desk to his left, upturning it and sending his own and the person sitting there's books flying everywhere. Sam immediately scrambled to help him. Castiel got up meanwhile grabbing his books and apologising profusely to the guy who was sitting at the knocked over desk.  
"Bloody hell!"  
The lanky boy with sandy hair and an out of place British accent grabbed his books from the floor and turned his desk back upright, sending a glance to Castiel that was mild irritation tinged with amusement.  
"So you're the new boy, eh? I'm Balthazar. And you've just made a horrible first impression on the entire class."  
Indeed all of the kids were looking at Castiel, whispering and giggling. Mr Singer stared at Castiel, looking vaguely alarmed before ascertaining that the boy was unharmed.  
"ALRIGHT! Everyone in yer seats and quiet. You can go back to yer useless chat once I've marked the roll."  
A red-faced Castiel moved to an unoccupied seat in the second row as Sam went back to his desk. According to the roll call, the girl whose seat he'd apparently taken was named Ruby Johnson. Some glanced at him when the name 'Castiel Novak' was called, but Castiel just stared at the wall and let out a small 'here'.

The roll done, the chatter continued until the bell. Castiel took out and looked at the schedule he'd been sent.

STUDENT: CASTIEL NOVAK  
YEAR: 9D

**MONDAY  
8:40-8:50 HOMEROOM  
8:50-9:40 P1 EXT. ENGLISH ROOM D10  
9:40-10:30 P2 HUMANITIES-HISTORY ROOM D7  
10:30-11:20 P3 MUSIC ROOM F3  
11:20-12:00 FIRST BREAK  
12:00-12:50 EXT. MATHEMATICS ROOM B5  
12:50-1:50 LUNCH  
1:50-2:40 SCIENCE-BIOLOGY ROOM C4  
2:40-3:30 SCIENCE-CHEMISTRY ROOM C5**

Room D10… he was already in D block, his English extension classroom couldn't be that far away.

**Extension English**

English wasn't that bad. Castiel got to meet some of Sam's friends, including a pale, frizzy haired girl named Jess and a guy who kind of seemed like a genius, Kevin. Their English teacher Mrs Bell was rather eccentric, rambling on about Sherlock Holmes' genius (the book they had been studying. Sam seemed to be incredibly engaged in what the teacher was saying) and the pitfalls of many other detective stories. They were in the middle of an assignment on that same book; the students were required to write a book report, present a multimodal presentation depicting an aspect of the book, explaining why the author added that element, and write an essay on how the books would differ if they were set in a different place and time. When Sam explained this to him, he'd also mentioned that they weren't allowed to do the 21st century, apparently much to Sam's chagrin as in the same conversation he enthused about his favourite episode of Sherlock (a toss-up between 'The Hound of the Baskerville' and 'The Reichenbach Fall').

Castiel was told that as it was the last three weeks of term 3, he should work on the assignment but didn't have to entirely complete it and its marks would not count towards his grade.

English went well.

**Humanities – History**

Mr Camp was their History teacher. He was rather listless, and the entire class looked bored. Jess took him there – she was in this class, but Sam had Geography. On the board were numbers of pages of questions they had to answer in their books for the lesson.

Humanities was dull.

**Music**

Although it was a considerably large school, there were only 11 kids in the year 9 music class, including Balthazar, Kevin and most surprisingly, Ruby. She could play piano beautifully. Mr Walker proclaimed that as assessment was over, they'd be working on musicianship for their chosen instrument for the rest of the term.

Castiel was playing tuned percussion, namely a full sized xylophone when they had their 'jam session' in the last twenty minutes of the lesson. He had been practising the piano, but Ruby had taken over lead piano so he resorted to something similar.

He loved the different sound of the xylophone, and how it was half like drums and half like a piano (the two other instruments he could play). It made beautiful music, and he was surprised to find that as an ensemble the music class actually sounded prettygood.

Music was all kinds of awesome.

The rest of the day he spent time trying to remember people's names (a skill he didn't have a particular affliction for), hurriedly taking notes, memorising routes and trying to figure out how to interact with different people. He was forever grateful that he seemed to have fallen in with the right kind of people with their own eccentricities; Sam's incredible enthusiasm about different 'fandoms' as the younger Winchester called them, Jess' niceness to everyone she talked to and her gorgeous drawing skills, and Kevin's phenomenal passion to study -not catch up on homework, actually revise- during lunchtime for tests that were over a week away. Jess mentioned that they usually had a larger group, but a couple of people were away on some sort of niche school trip.

The bell rang at the end of chemistry; Castiel exited and collected his things from his locker, and hurried down to be near first in line at the bus stop. Uncertainty haunted him about going back to his house. He never knew what the situation there would be like.

* * *

Author's Note:  
This chapter isn't particularly exciting, I'm mainly just introducing a bunch of characters and stuff. So yeah.  
Review, favourite, follow, etc if you want. :D

-E


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Home**

He'd always liked to climb trees. Even when he was young and could barely reach the first branch, he'd build platforms out of old sticks until he could.

As he got older, he became more daring, climbing up as high as he could, as far in to the canopy as the trees would allow. He'd always climb alone – no one knew about his tree climbing. Castiel would go to trees whenever he could, to escape, to think, sometimes even do his homework. Sometimes he liked to think that he had huge, glossy black wings and that he could just take off into the sky at any given moment, fantasizing that if the trees were his home, the night sky could be his ceiling.

Castiel had never considered any of the houses he lived in a home, as far as his memory goes. Perhaps he had once, but that was too long ago to recall. He'd moved around a lot, a large reason being constantly shuffled around to meet his Mum's medical requirements. He barely grasped why Lawrence had been the answer; eavesdropping closed door conversations had led him to believe there was some sort of specialist that resided in this relatively small town.

Castiel, instead of finishing the walk home after being left there, decided to walk in the opposite direction. After some exploration he found a small park with a medium sized alder tree.

So of course he climbed it.

-***-  
Castiel sat up there for a while before climbing back down and beginning the walk home.

He slowly strode up the gravel path driveway leading to his house, his pace dropping even more as he reached the chipped, beige door. Castiel quietly went inside, listening for any sound of talk.

Nothing.

Of course there was nothing, his father was out.

He crept down the hall, passing his parents' room as he did – before stopping. His mother was in, he realised from the sounds of someone trying to quietly cry. The boy crept in to the room, before dropping his bag and rushing to the side of the woman sitting on the bed, hooked up to countless tubes to keep her life from draining too quickly from her. Castiel hugged her as her sobs became louder. He could feel tears welling up in his own eyes – he loathed when his mother was sad. She had been quite a cheerful person, even after the cancer diagnosis, but ever since Castiel's older brother Michael had left, his mother had been a wreck.

Michael was the best child any family could ever have asked for. Playful and kind as a toddler, he quickly grew to become an unusually mature yet still boisterous six year old. Right around the time Castiel was born.

Castiel was unlike anyone else in the Novak family. His brown hair and incredibly blue eyes didn't match any of the rest of the family's sandy hair and chocolate eyes, his reservedness unheard of to the rest of the playful family. If they ever went on a holiday, Castiel would sit building houses for crabs while the rest of the family would be splashing around in the waves.

As he got older, he began to read. Any time in the car they were playing I Spy or some such other game, the youngest Novak would be avidly reading a book.

This wasn't such a problem until Castiel began to partake in school. Quickly outcast for his quirks, children would constantly taunt him, stealing his books and ripping out pages, or kicking and throwing sand at him and in his eyes. It continued all the way through primary school, some days definitively worse than others.

At this point, some kids began to realise Castiel and Michael were related, due to them sharing the slightly unusual last name. From there, Michael had two options. Defend his little brother, or condone the cruelty of the children and confess his personal distaste for Castiel.

Michael being Michael, he did neither. Castiel instead for him became near non-existent. Michael barely even acknowledged Castiel lived with him, sometimes barely even speaking two sentences to his brother in the course of a day.

Around the time Castiel was eleven and Michael beginning his last year of school, the news of their mother having pancreatic cancer came. Michael retreated even further from Castiel, the youngest Novak not even seeing him on some days.

Everything changed the night that fight happened. Michael wanted to drop out of school, and their father was having none of it. Their fight went from extremely vocal to mildly physical, so much so that when a younger Castiel tried to intervene he received a backhand across the face, causing him to drop to the floor, vision blurred and lips sticky with blood.

Castiel's brother stopped talking to everyone in the family except for their mother after that, unless what he had to say was vindictive or opposing. After just over a year of incredible tension in the Novak household, whispered fights between their parents and yelling matches between Michael and their father, Michael packed his bags one night and left.

He'd left three notes on the counter. One for Mum, one for Dad, and one for Castiel.  
Castiel's note simply read:  
_I never really considered you part of this family. You're too different, Castiel. –Mich._

After that terrible day, Castiel completely retreated into himself. He could see that things were getting worse with his mother, see that his father was becoming more and more stretched thin, but for over half a year Castiel barely did anything.

He couldn't help. He was **too different**. He didn't belong. He'd always felt displaced, disjointed from his family, even though he really did love them.

When he finally began to take notice of things again, peek out of his shell, he was just thirteen years old. His father started to yell at him more and more often, demanding to know why he couldn't help more, couldn't give more, couldn't _be _more.

He helped, but he kept to himself. Tiptoeing around the Novak household, he tried to keep as low a profile to his father as possible. They moved to Lawrence a couple of months later.

His mother was deteriorating more quickly these days, and crying wouldn't help. Eventually she stopped, and Castiel left her there so she could take a nap. He crept up to his room and sat curled up on his bed, back resting against the wall, thinking about his family. He wanted to help more, but the clear and painful truth was his mother cared more about and loved Michael than she ever could Castiel. It wasn't her fault. Castiel was never worth caring about much, anyway.

* * *

Author's Note:

Yaaaay! This chapter had no dialogue, which is kind of weird I suppose. But still, I had to give more of Castiel's backstory.  
Review, favourite, follow, etc if you like.  
:D

-E


End file.
